Listening to the music

Listening to the music.jpg

Sunday, at church, after the service was over, we sat again, as has become customary, while our extraordinary organist played the postlude.  Instruction to stay seated is not given in the bulletin; it just started happening. Not everyone stays and listens. Many get up and move to greet the minister, chat with a friend or visitor, or go find the coffee and treats. Those of us who do stay usually keep seated where we are but some switch to a pew closer to the front, where the pipe organ lives. Sunday's postlude was the most beautiful Bach's Prelude and Fugue in C Major. I love this quiet moment, this spontaneous and organic practice of leisure, this corporate dwelling in beauty.

In my work as a medical writer I've written a little about "consolidation therapy" - for some kinds of cancer, once the main treatment is finished another course of something is given to "consolidate" the main treatment's effect and to help finish the work it started. I sometimes think of walks after a session of creative writing as a period of consolidation. The thoughts and images that had earlier rushed in at the writing desk are given a chance to gel and find their place.

It struck me on Sunday, sitting quietly in that pew with Bach ringing, that this post-service listening is a kind of "consolidation therapy." The Word that has already moved through the hymns, the prayers, the readings, the sermon, the communion table now sinks in deeper, finishing the morning's inner work in ways unseen.

~~~

[Photo: taken on a Memorial Day hike.]

Marilynne Robinson on conventional mind and deep mind

Marilynne Robinson on conventional mind and deep mind.jpg

The November/December issue of Poets & Writers magazine featured a cover story on Marilynne Robinson. Her most recent books are the novel Lila and the essay collection The Givenness of Things. The piece gave much focus to her writing process. One of the photos was of a window in her home study that she sits near while writing long-hand in a hardcover notebook. Line-by-line, first sentence to last, she writes her books without revision. Let me say that again: without revision.

While I can’t relate to the “without revision” aspect of Robinson’s writing process, I can relate to her distinction of conventional mind and deep mind. Here is a section from the cover story:

“I tell my students that you have a conventional mind— a front-office mind, I call it—that basically deals with the business of living in the world. It’s what pays attention to things that are, in themselves, perhaps trivial. And then you have a deeper mind that you are very much surprised by, that has its own obsessions that you would not anticipate, that has its own favorite words, that has memories you can’t believe you remember. You can’t trust the superficial mind to give you something that’s original. But you can trust the deeper mind. That’s where you really live, where your truth is.”

I often think of this shift from writing with the front-brain mind to the deeper mind as “jumping the track,” and I can feel it when it happens. I’m not sure I thought about two levels of mind before I started writing, but they are there and not tied to writing. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote about the shift from superficial to shallow in his bestseller Flow. Greek philosophers called the two levels of mind ratio and intellectus. Ratio is the kind of knowing that emerges from intentionally working your brain; it is all about reasoning and logic. In contrast, intellectus is the kind of knowing that emerges from leisure, from stillness and contemplation; it is passive and receptive. We need both, of course, for a full life.

~

On another note, Relief Journal published on its blog an interview between me and Lisa Ohlen Harris, friend and their former creative nonfiction editor. (I’ve written about Lisa's wonderful books on this blog a couple times before.) The interview is mostly about the writing process and the role of community in writing. Please take a look; I’d be honored if you did. Here’s the link.

~~~

[Photo: taken of a portion of the November/December issue of Poets & Writers]

Gathering 2015: a review of this year's posts

Gathering 2015 A review of posts.jpg

[NOTE: The links in this post are no longer correct]

I spent a couple hours this morning reviewing my blog posts from 2015. In The Art of Thinking, Ernest Dimnet wrote, “To keep no track of what one learns or thinks is as foolish as to till and seed one’s land with great pains, and when the harvest is ripe turn one’s back upon it and think of it no more.” I agree with Dimnet and so look back at posts, journals, book notes, and other evidences of – and learning from – this life journey, this blog being a piece of that. I believe in being a student of one's life.

But I also reviewed my posts in order to gather them together in one place with some kind of organizing structure for readers' use. New subscribers have come on throughout the year and may find this a handy list of posts, and even regular readers miss posts or may like to revisit posts. Here they are – well, most of them – grouped into categories. 

A couple preliminary comments: 1) this is the year that Finding Livelihood came out so that category got a heavy weighting; 2) these categories are fluid and artificially narrow - for example, most of the posts could be under a single category of "paying attention to your life" or "living with intention" or "living a meaningful life," and the posts for books could be distributed under multiple categories, and the posts "on hope" could just as well be listed as "on love" or "on pilgrimage."

I offer this list to you as a place in which to dip in and read, to peruse at random or with strategy, in the hope that whatever words you choose to read or re-read may come alongside you as you wind up your 2015 and launch whatever is next.

On astonishment and gratitude:

On pilgrimage and choices:

On love and community:

On leisure, rest, sabbath:

On books and the ideas they contain:

On writing and creativity:

On hope:

On Finding Livelihood:

On work: 

~~~

About this blog:

[Photo: taken of the Christmas day landscape. True color, no filter.]

A moment of guerilla leisure with Kathleen Norris

A Moment of Guerilla Leisure.png

On a busy morning of a work-crammed week of a deadline-driven month, these words from Kathleen Norris in Dakota: A Spiritual Geography are like an island of calm. Taking two minutes to read them is act of guerrilla leisure, "guerilla" referring, of course, to an unconventional approach when you have little to spare or spend. Maybe reading them will be that for you too.

"Like all who choose life in the slow lane – sailors, monks, farmers – I partake of a contemplative reality. Living close to such an expanse of land I find I have little incentive to move fast, little need of instant information. I have learned to trust that processes take time, to value change that is not sudden or ill-considered but grows out of the ground of experience. Such change is properly defined as conversion, a word that at its roots connotes not a change of essence but of perspective, as turning round; turning back to or returning; turning one's attention to."

~~~

[Photo: taken of our river birch tree, which we planted about 5 years ago and that I love looking at every single day. One of our best investments.]

Pausing, savoring, slowing down

Pausing, Savoring, Slowing Down.jpg

Patheos Public Square is hosting a panel discussion on “Slow Living: Choosing an Unhurried Life.” You may find something of interest there to help you launch your summer. The ten panelists come from multiple faith traditions and a variety of cultural settings and so have unique insights as to what it means to slow down.

My friend Denise Frame Harlan has a piece (“They Say It Goes Fast But I’m Not So Sure") about the need to withdraw and take a slow pace in order to meet the needs of her children, and how that pace has had unseen benefits in her spiritual and writing life although at a professional and financial cost. (By the way, Denise is currently working on a book about her family’s story of finding affordable living in New England. I’ve read a chapter; it’s wonderful.)

“I owe a great deal to that earlier mom-training in solitude. I needed to step away from the social buzz, to step toward my family, and myself. It was hard, every day, but it crystallized my desire to connect more deeply through writing. The Quiet Hour became a life practice, a form of prayer. Writing became a form of prayer. I would not have chosen this path had I dawdled at those beautiful parties, talking.”

In “The Hope of Slow Living,” Chris Smith, co-author with John Pattison of Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus, writes that their book grew out of “the conviction that the Christian tradition had theology and practices with the potential to form Christian communities that could offer a meaningful and compelling alternative to fast culture.”

Christine Valters Paintner, from Abbey of the Arts, calls our attention to “in-between times” in “The Practice of the Holy Pause.” I love this concept: taking 10 minutes or 5 long breaths or allowing some threshold of pause between activities.

“The holy pause calls us to a sense of reverence for slowness, for mindfulness, and for the fertile dark spaces between our goals where we can pause and center ourselves, and listen. We can open up a space within for God to work. We can become fully conscious of what we are about to do rather than mindlessly completing another task.”

Michelle Wilbert writes about savoring. In “Coming to Our Senses: Savoring as Spiritual Practice," Wilbert shares what she’s learned from poet Mary Oliver about cultivating “a way of life that daily brings one to the threshold of joy.” About the practice of savoring, Wilbert writes:

“Unattached to an ideology or a particular religious expression, it's the spiritual practice of being fully alive and relishing the experience for exactly that; it's a practice of "enough" — it is enough to be here and to feel the presence of life in our bodies. Savoring is the experiential cornerstone of being fully alive and fully acknowledging and taking joy in the mundane….”

If you want to read more from the panel during a pause in your day, here’s the link.

~~~

[Photo: taken of a spot on the shore of Lake Superior at Gooseberry Falls State Park, at which my oldest son sat – on the second rock ledge down – and played guitar once long ago during a family camping trip. A beautiful pause; savoring the memory.]

Vacation: you can take back your mind to do with as you please

Vacation- you can take back your mind to do with as you please.png

In anticipation and celebration of summer vacations ahead, here's a short chapter, "Rejuvenation," from my first book, Just Think: Nourish Your Mind to Feed Your Soul.

~~~

Right before a vacation, my mental stress seems to peak. I can hardly concentrate or generate ideas. It is hard to think a thought through to completion. I want to leave my mind’s contents on my desk alongside my papers. I long to lie on a beach with an empty mind, using it only to read the novels packed in my bag.

Jan Karon.png

Once en route, I want to escape immediately to vacation mind-set. I try hard not to think about anything required of me. This attitude prevails for some time into the vacation. Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, my mind is piqued by some remembrance of a project, goal, or interest. I may even visit a bookstore and come away not with an escapist paperback but a serious book about that project, goal, or interest. Eventually I take out my notebook and write down an idea. I’ll do such and so when I get back, I think. I get excited.

This pattern of revival is confirmed by Anne Morrow Lindberg in Gift From the Sea: “At first, the tired body takes over completely. As on shipboard, one descends into a deck-chair apathy . . . And then, some morning in the second week, the mind wakes, comes to life again. Not in a city sense—no—but beach-wise. It begins to drift, to play, to turn over in gentle careless rolls like those lazy waves on the beach.”

What accounts for the transformation from a prevacation squeezed-shut mind to a mind open like a sponge? Quite simply, a true and solid break (as opposed to a break of the sort that can be as full of requirement, action, and chaos as any other day). A solid break is a time in which the mind can empty itself of overused and boring thoughts. A time in which the superfluous can boil off, leaving a rich core concentrate.

During a solid break, the tedium can be forgotten and mental ruts washed smooth. The original passion of projects and goals can refuel the energy that the extensive “to-do lists” associated with them have spent.

During a solid break, you can take back your mind to do with as you please. You can use it yourself or just let it exist. Let it lie with you on a beach chair. Let it move only when it’s ready.

Without downtime, the mind becomes as ineffective as a muscle that is continually contracted or a sponge that is never squeezed out. Solid breaks of one, two, or more weeks probably provide maximum recovery time, but shorter breaks and daily downtimes, in the form of relaxation and an adequate night’s sleep, are also valuable and critical.

Raymond Chandler.png

Shockingly, a weekly day of rest has the same stature within the Ten Commandments as the admonition against murder. “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath, to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work...” A weekly day of rest, in full knowledge of bills to be paid and work on the desk, of towels to be washed and groceries to be bought. A weekly day of rest taken freely, proactively, worshipfully, without guilt. Rejuvenation as commandment, not luxury.

~~~

[Photo: taken on a beach on Cape Cod last summer when we were there for our son's wedding.]

Heschel on Sabbath rest and beauty

Heschel on Sabbath rest and beauty.jpg

In Abraham Joshua Heschel’s The Sabbath, he uses a phrase big enough to hold the entire book, "The seventh day is like a palace in time." The word "palace" conveys the sense of beauty and delight that comprises this day of rest. Like a palace, the day is set apart from the surrounding days. Honored. Protected.

"How should we weigh the difference between the Sabbath and the other days of the week? When a day like Wednesday arrives, the hours are blank, and unless we lend significance to them, they remain without character. The hours of the seventh day are significant in themselves; their significance and beauty do not depend on any work, profit or progress we may achieve. They have the beauty of grandeur."

"In time" distinguishes the day from existing "in space." Our civilization is "a conquest of space,” wrote Heschel. We increase our space, enhance it by acquiring things to occupy it; by so doing we increase our power. But space is bought with time and time is the domain of God. On the Sabbath we admit the holiness of time and refrain from using it on things of space.

"What is so luminous about a day? What is so precious to captivate the hearts? It is because the seventh day is a mine where spirit's precious metal can be found with which to construct the palace in time, a dimension in which the human is at home with the divine; a dimension in which man aspires to approach the likeness of the divine."

Using poetic language and style, Heschel weaves together allegory, quotation, liturgy, midrash, exegesis, and reflection to construct a defense for the Jewish understanding of the Sabbath. Heschel's work is a classic authority on the topic of the Sabbath, quoted in most serious works on the subject, and has given this Christian Protestant woman much to ponder about the Sabbath and the architecture of time.

The honoring of the Sabbath – the second commandment – as described by Heschel has no hint of sacrifice, sternness, or restriction but instead rings of abundance, joy, delight, and beauty. No thought of work or worry shall touch the Sabbath. No collapsed exhaustion shall fill its hours. It is the feast of the week. The festival for which the six days of work prepare.

"The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of Sabbath. It is not an interlude but the climax of living."

So what shall the day ahead hold? A long walk; worship; good simple food; silence; an afternoon nap; coffee with someone I love; no worries for tomorrow (always hard to do); music; time in the sunshine; a half-finished book. Your day ahead?

~~~

[Photo: taken at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden last summer, on a Sunday outing.]